


Mother's Weekend

by petals42_tumblr (rosepetals42)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Set during Freshmen Year, overdose mention, pre-comic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-21 16:45:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12461811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosepetals42/pseuds/petals42_tumblr
Summary: So after all that, after everything, Jack still loves it. Bob still loves it. And she… she is the mean, old, angry mother who can’t love something that makes her child happy.She couldn’t even make herself go to his first game.And now she doesn’t know if she can make herself go to this one. Even though she is here. Even though it is happening in less than two hours at a Stadium less than ten minutes from where she sits.or an Alicia Zimmermann-centric piece as she goes to Parents’ Weekend during Jack’s freshmen year





	Mother's Weekend

Originally posted to tumblr [here](http://petals42.tumblr.com/post/166179984114/mothers-weekend)

 

Somewhere, deep in her heart, Alicia Zimmermann knows she is a bad mother.

It started out as a worry, as maybe it does for all new mothers, that she  _will_  be a bad mother. That she won’t know what to do with a baby or a toddler that one day she will accidentally drop him or forget to feed him or feed him something he is actually allergic to or maybe she’ll scar him emotionally somehow and she worried but she survived his childhood okay. And then, after he was five or six, she stopped worrying about it. She thought she was doing pretty good. Jack had hockey and loved hockey and, sure, they didn’t have deep emotional talks but she didn’t exactly have any basis of comparison. Television families told her she was doing okay. No teenage boy wanted to have deep talks with his mother. And, look, if Jack didn’t talk to her all that much as he turned 12 and then 13, at least he was still talking to his father. Mostly still about hockey but she… she thought that had counted. Hockey was like French, to her. Another language she could understand but couldn’t quite speak. But Bob could. He was on top of it. Jack was taken care of.

She loved Jack. That was never the problem. The problem was that her love wasn’t enough. It didn’t matter. It didn’t alert her to any of the facts and maybe it even blinded her– She loved her son and her son loved hockey and so she loved hockey too. She loved her son and then her son seemed to love a boy named Kent and they never  _talked_  about it but she let Kent come over all the time and she figured they would discuss it at some point. She just… assumed everything was okay. Even after he was diagnosed with the anxiety disorder and given pills. It was always… well, that was a little problem but it’s handled and under control and everything is okay now.

See. Bad mother.

A good mother would have  _known_  somehow.

A good mother would have pushed and prodded or sensed it without even having to be told.

A good mother would have paid attention to how  _hard_ Jack was on himself. A good mother would have made sure her son had interests outside of hockey. A good mother would have known that Jack’s long silences after losses weren’t normal. A good mother would have preached balance and fostered friendships with different types of people and  _stopped the fucking hockey._

She didn’t though. Stop the hockey. No, not Alicia Zimmermann. She encouraged it. She went to the games and cheered the loudest and she even loved it a little bit because she thought it brought him joy, like his father. She bought into the vision: Jack playing hockey like Bob, the Zimmermann legacy continued throughout the ages…

God, she even used to tease Jack about how it took his father  _three_  years to win a Cup and she was sure Jack could manage it faster than his old man.

A good mother wouldn’t have done that. So, see, she’s always been a bad mother. Even now, now that she’s almost lost him, now that she’s  _promised_  to do better, now that she’s finally read all the books and online articles about anxiety and pressure and the danger of sports and hockey culture… now she’s still just as bad. Just for different reasons.

Now she is a bad mother because it’s Saturday afternoon and he’s been at Samwell for almost three months and she does not feel like mothers are supposed to feel in this moment.

She glances around. At the sea of other mothers and fathers crammed onto Samwell’s campus for Parents’ Weekend. They are not nervous. They are excited. Happy. Enthusiastic. Overjoyed to see the teenager they had left just a couple months ago again. To her right is a father almost (but not quite) breaking into a run to give his son a hug. To her left, a mother has burst into tears. Happy tears.

And then there’s her. She’s not excited to see Jack. Well, no. No, it’s not that she’s not excited. She is. She  _is_. (She  _is_. She repeats it once more just to remind herself). She is just…

She is nervous too. More nervous than she is excited.

It’s why she’d told Bob that it was okay for her to go alone to this. He has an event and, more than that, she doesn’t want him to see her like this. Scared. Nervous to see her own son. Besides, he’d come down for the first game of the season, to watch Jack’s debut back on the ice and a good mother would have come to that but–

_“I’m so sorry, baby, I have a benefit that I really can’t get out of. I’m so sorry. Parents’ weekend, though, alright? I’ve cleared my whole schedule. I can make it for Parents’ weekend.”_

And, of course, that was just another bullet point to add to her list. Because that was a lie. She is Alicia Zimmermann. She easily could have gotten out of that benefit. Sure, Sally would have had to step up to give the keynote speech but Sally has been waiting for that opportunity for ages anyway so…

She could have gone. Should have. But she wasn’t ready. To see Jack. To see Jack back on the ice.

Because, god, now she  _fucking hates hockey_. She hates everything about it. After Jack got back from… from getting better, she had banned it in the house. No replays, no hockey news, no ESPN, no skating. It was one of the few times she had yelled at Bob in their marriage. The first time he tried to switch the channel to an old game even though Jack was still thin and exhausted and had already gone up to bed. She had yelled and thrown the remote at the TV when she couldn’t change it fast enough and then sobbed and he had listened. No hockey. Not for 5 wonderful weeks.

Of course, she couldn’t keep Jack away. His therapist specifically told her not to.  _He needs to reestablish his passions again– decide for himself if he wants to go back._ So for all she tried–filling up his time with silly things like seeing movies in the middle of the day and shopping and shovelling books onto him in their own rough form of a book club–eventually, Jack went back to it. Just to the ice first, skating around the stupid pond in the backyard, and then he went out with his stick and a puck and then set up a goal and then coaching and then– and then–

“ _I think I’m going to try to play at the college level. I’ve reached out and some–some places seem to want me. Even with the… you know.”_

Bob had nailed the booming enthusiasm they were supposed to show for Jack taking initiative and planning out his future and Alicia had managed a smile and a hug and hoped that Jack thought the tears in her eyes were tears of joy.

She isn’t sure you can be a good mother if you hate the decision your child has made.

But she does. She sits on the old wooden bench which wasn’t around when she went here and tries not to glare around her at the other mothers who are oohing and aahing at all the right places as their children talk about classes and the campus and whoever it is they are dating or not dating and all she can think about is how much she hates hockey.

She hates the sound of skates on the ice and the cold of the rink and the stupid puck and the rules that make no sense and the  _violence_  that is just allowed for no good reason and the pressure and the players and her whole life has somehow been wrapped up in this fucking sport that she cannot  _stand_. She hates it. She hates it she hates it she hates it and she hates that Jack loves it enough that he wanted to go back. Even though it almost destroyed him.

She even hates that he’s good at it. She hates that Bob came back from that season opener and smiled at her and said  _“My god, Ali, he’s still got it! Gonna be better than me. Just you wait. Just you wait. Damn, those reporters are going to eat their words in a few years. He’s gonna be huge. He’s gonna be– he’s still got it, sweetie. Right like he never even left.”_

So after all that, after everything, Jack still loves it. Bob still loves it. And she… she is the mean, old, angry mother who can’t love something that makes her child happy.

She couldn’t even make herself go to his first game.

And now she doesn’t know if she can make herself go to this one. Even though she is here. Even though it is happening in less than two hours at a Stadium less than ten minutes from where she sits.

Jack had been apologetic that he couldn’t meet up with her before the game and she had smiled and said  _“Oh, of course, dear, don’t worry about me! I’ll go grab a coffee at Annies!”_  as if she isn’t terrified that this is all him falling into old habits. As if she isn’t terrified she knows where this was going. As if she isn’t terrified to see her son after a game. To see her son at all.

If she remains very still and stares off into a middle distance and doesn’t focus on any of the families around her and doesn’t let herself move too much, maybe she won’t start crying.

She thinks the problem is that for all the mothers and fathers around her, these last three months have been an anomaly. It’s not normal for them to not see their child every day and talk every day and know every intimate detail of their lives. So they come to campus and they are excited and it’s trying to cram three months of information into 2 short days and it’s easy and fun and everyone knows how they are supposed to act and, sure, maybe there are a few new things but they are all  _expected_  new things. Like your kid picked up some kind of questionable fashion sense or they grew three inches or their friends taught them to skateboard. It’s all recognizable.

She doesn’t know how to tell people, even when they ask, that she doesn’t have that. For years, Jack had been away. Away games and away tournaments and then the Q and she… she is used to the separation. She hates that about herself but it’s true. It had been strange to have him around for 14 months.

( _12 and a half_ , her brain corrects unhelpfully,  _He was only_ home _for twelve and a half of those)._

She hates even more that it had been awkward. Especially at first. And the therapist  _she_  saw briefly said that that was normal, said that it was okay to not know what to say, said that after an event like this, everyone had to renegotiate their roles and she wanted to believe that that was the reason for the misplaced silences and stilted conversations and stuttering stops and starts that permeated the first few months Jack was home but…

But she knew that wasn’t it. Not all of it.

The truth was that she and Jack hadn’t interacted that much even before his overdose. She loved him, of course. She loved him more than anything but she… they… He was quiet and they both were busy and they didn’t have a pattern to fall back on.

She was positive for the first few months that she was annoying the shit out of him. She would babble endlessly and he would maybe listen, maybe just sit there and he always let her pick the TV show or movie and he would go with her to the mall just for something to do, just to get him out of the house. He would do these things when she asked but she wasn’t sure he enjoyed any of them.

They fell into a habit eventually. He started asking follow-up questions to her stories, rolling his eyes a little at some of her TV choices, ditching her at Macy’s to swing by the bookstore. He was still quiet but they were both less busy and it was working. Slowly but surely, they were building something.

And then he chose hockey again. And, yes, he’d listened to her comments about going to a school that wasn’t  _all_  about hockey, he’d chosen Samwell, her alma mater, and she was grateful–it’s not that she wasn’t–she just…

She doesn’t know what version of Jack she is going to see tonight. She doesn’t know if it is going to be Jack from the Q, serious, intense, and single-minded; or maybe, if they lost, Jack from just after, lost and defeated and  _sad_.

Maybe she’ll get the Jack from August. The Jack who smiles with one side of his mouth and teases her about how she always buys anything children are selling at lemonade stands or Girl Scout Cookies or those awful carwashes that make your car look worse and chuckles softly sometimes to himself. Maybe she will get that one.

But that Jack was so new. She had just met him in maybe January or February and she– she–

She doesn’t know what she’ll do if he’s gone.

*^*^*^

She makes it to the game. She doesn’t admit, even to herself, how close she came to not going because it doesn’t matter. She makes it. She slides in just before it is set to start but since she’s is only one person alone, she still gets a pretty good seat.

And then it’s a bit like muscle memory. Her eyes naturally strain a little and focus on the puck and she claps at all the right points and screams “ _Yeah, Jack!”_  when he is close enough to her side of the boards to hear her. She even manages to smile and small-talk with the people around her during the intermissions between periods who recognize her and know her son. She does the old, practiced head-bob and the polite laugh and the  _“Oh, yes, yes we’re so proud he decided to come back to it. Yes, he’s doing great.”_

Samwell wins, 3-2. One of the goals is Jack’s. And Bob had been right, she can see that. Jack looks on the ice like he always did: fast, strong, fearless, and even in that stupid #1 Jersey that her eyes track instinctively.

And then it’s all just more familiar patterns, more worn routines that make her stomach sink with fear. Jack doesn’t look up in the stands after the game to try to find her or Bob and then he’s gone back to the locker room and the rest of the stadium drains of people while she moves to the bleachers closest to the exit that Jack will eventually come out of and sits and waits.

And waits.

And waits.

Because the other boys file out, laughing and shoving each other, high off their win and their youth but Jack doesn’t. No, not Jack. He is always the last one out of the locker room because her son has to sit and go over every minute of the game for things he could have done better even if his team fucking  _won_  and her son will come out silent and subdued and accept her congratulations with a look in his eyes that says he doesn’t believe it. That he could have done more.

After losses, she and Bob used to wait for upwards of forty minutes for their son. That’s forty minutes after everyone else had left.

It’s creeping on twenty minutes now. Twenty minutes even though they had  _won_ and Jack said he wanted this and he was still skyping his therapist at least once a week, sometimes more (she is a bad mother. She isn’t supposed to keep track of that but she looks at how much time they are billed for every week. She has to know). Twenty minutes even though it was supposed to be different this time.

This is not different. This is the same.

She’s going to say something, she promises herself even though it’s a lie. She’s going to point out that this is the same, that it’s happening again, that she won’t let it go down like this, not again. She is going to stop this. She is going to–

“Come  _on,_ man. It’s–no. Do not.”

Laughter.

That was Jack’s voice getting louder and it wasn’t Jack’s laugh, no, but that means–

Two boys suddenly tumble out of the tunnel.

Jack,  _her_ Jack, hair wet and flopping into his face in that way that made him look like a spitting image of Bob, sweatpants on with those terrible shoes, gym bag slung over one shoulder and that’s all the same, that’s what she was expecting but then.

His other hand is tangled in the sleeve of another boy, pulling him firmly along. And this other boy–he is…

His brown hair is even shaggier than Jack’s, long enough that if he were hers, she would start telling him it was time for a cut; he is shorter than Jack ( _his type,_  her mind fills in unhelpfully and she tries to squash that thought as soon as it comes because, no, they had never actually talked about Kent and–no. Not now); he is younger than Jack and he is giggling and halfheartedly struggling against Jack’s grip even though his hand, wrapped around the hem of Jack’s shirt, is another point of contact keeping them together.

“Let me do it,” this new boy says, digging his feet in a little. “No one will know. C’mon. Let me do it! Let me do it! You know you want to!”

Jack is not paying attention to him. His head is swinging up, looking for her now (finally), but he looks up to the left first so Alicia gets to watch for another few heartbeats as her son rolls his eyes (just a little) and keeps his grip secure as he spins them both around and–

“Let me, let me, let me, just a little, Jacky.”

“Hello,  _mom_ ,” Jack says, the name he never calls her emphasized enough that the other boy freezes and stops trying to run back down the tunnel. Satisfied, Jack lets go of him and takes the four steps up to her and he is relaxed, she realizes as he goes to hug her. He is smiling, just a little on that one side and hugs after games aren’t new for them (she’d always insisted, he’d learned to accept the routine) but this one feels different. This one feels like all those ones she saw today looked like.

“Hi,  _maman_ ,”Jack says in her ear, just for her, as they are still hugging. She closes her eyes and squeezes and lingers.

“Hi, baby.”

Jack leans away before she does and for a split second, she has forgotten all about the other boy because, honestly, why should she care about anyone else in the world but her son right now? But Jack looks back to him and her eyes find him.

He has dug his hands into the front pocket of his hoodie and is very carefully looking anywhere but at them as if not to intrude on their reunion. As she steps down, Jack’s hand on her elbow as if she needs assistance, he takes an awkward half-step away.

It’s Jack who breaks the silence.

“Maman, this is Shitty.”

She sees the other boy start at Jack’s casual use of his hockey nickname but Alicia is long used to those. She’s listened to stories of boys called Bear and Topside and Gurgle and Bonehead and she and Bob had never managed a strict “No Cursing” policy in the house so Shitty was not a big deal.

“Shitty, my mom. Alicia Zimmermann.”

Shitty steps forwards and shakes her hand and it’s as he steps back that he mutters “Dude, I know who your mom is,” in a tone meant for Jack’s ears only and Jack  _smiles_  at him as if he’d made some kind of a joke that Alicia feels that question pop into her head.

Who is this kid exactly? Who is he to Jack, who is Jack to him, what is he doing here, why are they together, what does this mean?

Why,  _why_  did it have to be another hockey player?

The silence stretches for a beat and she sees Jack tilt his head at her and she realizes that in a good-mother script she has said something by now. Not just shook hands and sort of glared at her son’s friend.

“Sorry we’re late,” Jack says, filling the silence or maybe thinking that is why she is annoyed. “The freshmen are in charge of cleaning the locker room and it was me and Shitty’s turn.”

“Oh, that’s fine!” she says, coming back into herself.  _(She will not be rude. She will not turn into some sort of homophobic_ monster _just because she doesn’t want Jack falling into another relationship that it is all hockey and competition and–)_. “No problem, sweetie. What number are you, Shitty?”

It’s her attempt to make up for her less than warm greeting. She isn’t good at seeing past the visors on their helmets but numbers are easier. #39 got a lot of playing time, scored one of the goals she believes, though #12 was on Jack’s line and they seemed to pass a lot.

“Oh, I’m number 42,” Shitty says. “I don’t play that much. I’m actually a walk-on so I don’t rack up all the minutes like Jack over here. With that fuc– freaking  _beaut_  of a goal!”

“He’s getting a lot better,” Jack tells her earnestly, brushing off Shitty’s compliment. “He’s gonna be on my line by next year.”

“ _Your_  line?” Shitty says. “Wow, really? Entitled. And rude. Gross. Who even wants to be on  _your_  line?”

“You do,” Jack says. “You told me just the other day. Repeatedly.”

“I did no such thing.”

“You did,” Jack replies. “It was when you were–”

Jack cuts out abruptly and Alicia watches as both boys remember that she is there. Jack’s teasing smile, which had been threatening to lift both sides of his mouth, dials back down and Shitty’s face turns an embarrassed light pink.

“Uh, well, maybe I mentioned that,” Shitty says, making a valiant effort to pretend her son wasn’t about to say“drunk” or maybe “high” and suddenly she is delighted by this. Shitty is a  _walk-on_  who gets drunk and/or high and babbles to her son how he wants to be on his line.

“Well, next game I make, I’ll watch for you,” she tells him earnestly. “I doubt it will take a whole year.” Jack sort of beams at her. Shitty looks a bit surprised by the assertion. At least he blinks at her and shuffles oh his feet.

“Oh, well, you know– all Jack over here. With the coaching.” He calls her son, Jack. Not Zimmermann or Zimms or Z or any hockey nickname. Just Jack. His name.

“Anyway,” Shitty says, taking another one of those half-steps away and jerking one hand towards the door. “I’m gonna take off. It was really nice meeting you, Mrs. Zimmermann.”

Alicia glances at Jack’s face long enough to see it has fallen into a slight frown before she focused on Shitty.

“Oh, are you meeting your parents somewhere else?” she asks brightly.

“Oh, uh, no,” Shitty says, shaking his head. He is young, Alicia realizes. Young like Jack never quite was. “No, they couldn’t make it.”

She feels bad she made him admit that aloud but if there’s one thing she’s good at, it’s getting what she wants and now that he’s admitted he doesn’t have other plans, she can just–

“Well, then you can join Jack and I!” she says. “We’re going out for dinner.”

“No, no,” Shitty says and his parents didn’t come down for parents’ weekend but someone drilled manners into him. “That’s okay. I wouldn’t want to be a bother. You two have fun. I’m just going to swing by the cafet–”

“I insist,” Alicia says. “Let me just call and change our reservations from two to three.”

And then she pulls out her phone and starts walking, leaving him absolutely no real choice in the matter.

Because Shitty is not that good at hockey and Shitty makes her son smile and Shitty’s parents didn’t come and as Shitty ducked his head just a little at her insistence, Jack had mouthed  _Thank you_  at her as if they had some secret code that she had unlocked and in that moment, it is like she is a good mother.

*^*^*^

It quickly becomes apparent that the slightly shy, polite boy who shook her hand and offered to leave her and Jack alone is not the Real Shitty.

The Real Shitty is the one who, turns out, did not help her son clean the locker room at all because he was too busy trying to convince Jack to let him put Nair in Mark Winger’s shampoo ( _“he brings it from home, maman,” Jack tells her. “It is…” Jack looks to Shitty. “It’s obnoxious, Mrs. Zimmermann. Kid is a grade A tool!”_ ) because Winger is a “jerkface” (actually a “fuckface” but Shitty had managed to switch that at the last second). The Real Shitty is the one who start tripping over his words in his haste to tell her about his Gender Studies 101 class and then in the next breath tells her that Jack is saving his ass in the history class they are taking together because “did you know your son is sort of a complete nerd?”. The Real Shitty calls her son a “fucking beaut” three times before they finish their main course and by dessert, has relaxed enough to tell her that he thinks her work in the Vogue 1983 magazine is  _revolutionary_  in terms of gender roles and–

The Real Shitty talks entirely too much and then will seem to realize it and cut off abruptly and then stay silent for a grand total of four minutes, practically vibrating with the effort until he starts up again.

But, also, the Real Shitty will go silent the moment Jack starts to speak and beam at him after as if he has done the world a personal favor. The Real Shitty makes Jack smile. The Real Shitty makes Jack  _laugh_  twice and Jack had never struck her as a tactile person, even with friends, but Shitty seems to be in almost constant physical contact with him and Jack grabs and steers Shitty away from things without thought and slugs him in the arm as they get to the restaurant and Alicia steps ahead and Shitty says “Dude, your mom is fucking  _hot_ , bro.” Alicia politely pretends not to notice.

Shitty is a little bit obnoxious but, boy, does he love her son. Alicia can already see that. And he’s good for Jack. They are just finishing up dessert and they’ve ordered coffee (even though, “Maman, that is the  _last_  thing Shitty needs.” “Hey!”).

“So, Mrs. Zimmermann, Jack was telling me that you do a lot of work with The Hunger Project.”

Alicia blinks. She doesn’t really talk to Jack too much about their charity work. This is from… this is from the useless babbling she did back when he first got home.

“He says you’ve been to the… what’s the word?”

“Epicenter,” Jack fills in easily. Like they talked about this all the time.

“Yeah, the epicenter in Ethiopia.”

It’s a prompt, she realizes, and she’s going to have to respond. Which works because good mothers don’t turn and smile in amazement and say  _You were listening?_  to their son in a public place.

“Well, one of them,” she corrects. “There are 8 now, I think, in Ethiopia alone. They are community centers designed to…”

Also, the Real Shitty is smart. She learns that too. It’s not as important as the other facts, but she thinks it still matters. Her son’s friend is smart and will remember of the details of this conversation just like Jack remembered the details and my goodness, even at the beginning, he was  _listening._

*^*^*^

When they get back to Samwell, Jack asks her if she wants to go for a walk around campus and this time, despite Jack’s polite invitation, Shitty does firmly bow out and Alicia doesn’t stop him.

And then it’s just the two of them. And Alicia doesn’t remember what she was so nervous about. Because they link arms and Jack… well, the sentences are short and simple but, still, Jack tells her about his dorm room and the food at the caf and the classes he doesn’t share with Shitty (and somehow it’s even more satisfying to hear him whine, like a normal kid, about how much he  _hates_  the geology class he’s taking for his science requirement).

And suddenly it matters even more that he chose to go to  _her_  alma mater because she can tell him about  _her_  least favorite class and oh my god, is that old professor still teaching? And, you know Jack, she made out with Robbie Benton under this tree right here.

“Ugh, maman,” Jack groans, trying to pull away from her even though their arms are linked. “Gross.”

“It was,” she agrees, giggling. “Way too much tongue. He went on to date Tara Petit, though, who was a  _much_  better kisser so maybe she taught him.”

“ _Maman_ ,” Jack says. “You aren’t supposed to tell me this.”

“Oh, such a prude,” she teases. And then, because it’s been over a year and they are kind of on the subject and, yes, she already knows the answer but she wants him to know she knows the  _question_ , she says:

“So… Shitty?”

Jack looks at her. She blinks at him. His eyebrows scrunch in confusion.

“You two seem very close,” she tries. “He’s very cute.”

She watches as the realization hits Jack in waves. First what she is asking, then what she  _knows_  to ask and she feels him tense but she keeps her arm where it is and keeps their pace steady and walks him through it.

“You think… me and  _Shitty_?” Jack finally manages. His voice is soft even though no one is around.

“Well, his eyes are very pretty,” she says, still willing to make this light if it needs to be. Then, she takes a breath and goes for it. “Though… not blond.”

Jack stops.

“You… you knew?”

“Yes.”

Of course she had known. Kent turned up at their house all brash attitude and confidence and competition and hard edges and then he would look at her boy and his sharp smile would soften and Jack would duck his head and smile at Kent’s teasing and all those boys wanted to do was hang out alone in the basement, never with any other teammates, never with her and Bob. It had not taken a rocket scientist to figure it out.

Kent called him everyday for the first seven weeks. Just checking in at first. Then asking to talk to Jack. Alicia would relay the message and Jack would shake his head and Alicia would tell Kent Jack was busy. That he would call him back. She’s not sure it was the kindest thing to do but she had her own son to worry about then. He’d stopped eventually.

“It wasn’t his fault,” Jack says finally. Firmly. He sounds older and she doesn’t like it. She wishes he didn’t have to sound like that sometimes.

“Of course not, baby,” she says. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

Jack starts walking again and she rethreads her arm through his. They walk in silence for a while. She gives Jack time to tell her more if he wants to but when he doesn’t, she returns to the original question. Just to make this easier again. A bit of a joke.

“So, come on,” she says. “You and Shitty?”

“Hah. No,” Jack says. “Never. He’s just… He’s Shitty.”

Alicia has known Shitty for all of three hours and she knows that that is as good a description as you can get for the boy who has somehow attached himself to her son.

“I like him,” Alicia says.

“Me too,” Jack agrees. Then stops but in that way that, if you know him, you know means he will continue if you don’t interrupt. She waits it out. “He, uh, you know he really likes hockey. Like… he doesn’t like being  _good_  at hockey. He just… loves the sport. That’s the only reason he wanted to walk-on. For fun.”

Alicia nods. She doesn’t fully understand the difference but she senses it’s important to Jack. That maybe this is his first interaction with someone like that.

“He likes a lot of things, actually,” Jack continues. “Everything.”

“He seems to like you,” Alicia says, poking her son in the side with her elbow. “You know the best friends you make freshmen year are the ones you are stuck with for life.”

Jack smiles and ducks his head but doesn’t deny it.

Her boy has a best friend.

“His parents are kinda… uh. I don’t know,” Jack says after a beat. “Not the best?”

“Have you met them?” she asks.

“Well they’re divorced. His dad came down for the opener, like Papa, and he’s…” Jack makes a face. “He and Shitty don’t get along very much, I think.”

“And his mother?”

“His mom is very… She is really smart, but, you know…” Jack says and she can see his inner-polite Canadian at war with what he wants to say. She keeps quiet. “I don’t know, Shitty doesn’t hear from her very much.”

“That’s too bad,” Alicia says and tries to forget that for years, she talked to Jack maybe once or twice a week. They text more now but still.

“Yeah, that’s why…” Jack’s shoulder moves as he waves his hand between them. “You know. I figured it would be good for him to meet you.”

“Me?” Alicia repeats. She doesn’t quite understand what Jack is saying here.

“Well, not that you should… like  _be_  his mom. Obviously. Uh, um, just since you-you’re good at this.”

It’s her turn to want to stop walking but she doesn’t because she’s… she’s what? She’s not… She doesn’t say anything because how can she? She is… she is  _not_ good at this. That’s what she has been saying for forever. She isn’t– she can’t–

“At the talking. And the hugs after games. And, you know, the mom stuff.”

It’s dark out but in the lamp-light, Alicia can see that Jack is getting red and flustered and looks about ready to never talk again and that works out because he’s so embarrassed that he’s looking away from her so he can’t see that her eyes have filled with tears and her free hand is pressing against her chest as if that will help matters and, fuck, she is going to burst into tears in a second and  _Jack thinks she is a good mother._

Good enough that he wants to share her with his friend.

“Okay,” she says and she means for it to come out firm but she must sound a little shaky ‘cause Jack looks down at her.

“Okay?” he repeats. “Wait, are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“No, no, dear,” she says, taking another breath that comes out smooth on the exhale. Well. Sort of smooth. “I’m fine. I’m just… I’m very happy. For you.”

“For me?” Jack repeats. He’s confused. Which makes sense. This isn’t really what he was talking about, was it?

“You seem to really like Samwell,” she says by way of explanation. “I’m glad it’s working out so well.”

“Um, yeah,” Jack says and she knows that, like his father, he is still trying to analyze what exactly is  _wrong_  with her so he can make her feel better. “Yeah, it is.”

“Perfect,” she replies. “Let’s go shopping tomorrow. You need new shoes.”

“ _Maman_ ,” Jack groans. “I like these–”

“Tell Shitty he’s coming too,” she says. “He needs a haircut.”

Jack huffs a laugh, but doesn’t argue. They are almost back to his dorm now and they walk in silence for a bit and it is suddenly all perfect. She is walking arm in arm with her tall, handsome son who is alive and happy and healthy and she is going to get to mother the shit out of him  _and_  his best friend and she– she–

For the first time in a long time, she feels good.


End file.
